


I'll Crawl Home to Her

by landy67



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Fix It Fic, Fix-It, Romance, john andre deserves the world, watched 3x10 and my heart hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26038906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landy67/pseuds/landy67
Summary: A Fix-It Fic post 3x10.Not canon compliant. (So...not Am History correct)
Relationships: John André/Peggy Shippen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	I'll Crawl Home to Her

Before he stepped down, he shut his eyes.

It wouldn’t have helped in the slightest. He knows that. The pain would have been instantaneous and nothing could block that out.

John André didn’t feel like a very brave man at that moment. He felt like a scared boy clinging to his mother skirts in the halls of their home in England. Or that time when the fort was captured. But this fear was different. It had a sense of finality to it. A single breath left in the words.

An apt comparison if you will.

What would it feel like? Death, that is. Or maybe the afterlife. Was it cold? Would he see her? Her blonde curls twirled around his fingers, those bright blue eyes staring at him with such an affection. Such a wonderment. By God, he thought, seeing her face impressed upon his eyelids.  _ If I die today, I will crawl out from the Earth just to see those blue eyes once more. _

There was a time he only saw red. Red of a nation that cloaked him in a blanket of security and taught him how to be strong. Red of his mother’s skirts as she brushed through his hair and sang sweetly to him. The streaks of rouge against his fingers from a lover’s cheeks and lips. Maroon stained oil painting across his fingers and canvas. The hot sticky burning red of blood coating his hands, his face, his very soul as he watched his men fall around him.

And then the world became blue. The ocean of her full dress skirts that crashed into him. The blue of her eyes like the sky on a clear summer day. Blue of the portraits in his Philadelphia home. The royal navy blue of the Patriots uniform as he sat in that tent, knowing his fate had been decided the moment he was captured.

There was a third color, was there not? Pure white. The white of bitter winters clinging to the barren land under his boots as they marched through the countryside. White of the flags flown before him. Of blindfolds tied over his eyes and binding his wrists.

Did he open his eyes the entire time or did it already happen? He remembers the flashes, the feeling of freefalling, but the world was silent. Or was it?

“John,” a familiar voice cuts over the silence. Blue eyes levels in his eyesight (so he  _ did  _ open them. Probably when the British tried to charge their own entrenchments). “Are you alright?”

It’s not the same shade of blue, but it’s enough. “Yes, I am quite alright. Did I-?”

“Captain André! Major Tallmadge! A report from General Washington,” a man, practically a boy, shouts as he rushes towards them. The word captain is a gentle reminder of the few sacrifices he made to be here at this moment.

“They’ve surrendered. We’ve taken Yorktown. General Washington said to tell you specifically Captain André that Arnold was killed in the final raid. You have an excellent shot, sir.”

The dismissal he gives the boy sounds hollow in his ears because all he can think about is the blue that now adorns his body. The stay of execution. Washington’s offer. Peggy’s acceptance.

“You hear that, John? We won,” Ben breathes, as if speaking any louder would shatter the truth that now hung around them. Ben’s eyes haven’t left the figure of the bearded fisherman Brewster. “Soon enough you’ll be going home to that wife of yours.”

“Yes,” André agrees. He thinks of the most recent letter Peggy wrote to him. The babe was nearly ready to be born and she believed it to be a son. “Perhaps we’ll go home sooner than we expect.”

It was never about Britain. Home was never Britannia. Home was by Peggy’s side and he would love her nation as ardently as he loved her.

**Author's Note:**

> Rat Kings, this is for you.
> 
> Title taken from Work Song by Hozier bc I played it on repeat.


End file.
